George Anderson
Scope of Service Experience Anderson brings comprehensive experience in strategic network planning to retailers and retail banking organizations. Anderson enables companies to navigate through a number of pragmatic steps to achieve their primary goal: “understand whom your customer is today, in order to plan for your customer of tomorrow.” Anderson has worked with industry leading organizations such as Skipton Information Group, which develops and implements geo-demographic market segmentation and spatial analysis interaction software solutions across a number of industry verticals: retail, financial, consumer goods, e-commerce and forecourt. Clients were introduced to leading edge retail designs, product placement initiatives and approaches -- which led to brand enhancement and execution of the strategic plan. In addition, Anderson consulted to a number of large financial organizations. Education Bachelor’s of Honours degree from the University of Ryerson, Executive Management Program Designation at Richard Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. Background & Experience Spent fourteen years at Scotiabank in various senior roles in both domestic retail banking and international distribution network planning. Responsibilities included development and implementation for all branch network planning initiatives on a global basis (which included business case preparation, site selection, and M&A evaluations), geographical information systems support across the organization: retail bank, commercial, wealth management, ABMs, and real estate. Additionally,Anderson led the education and communication processes with divisional and regional executives that provided them with local market insights, which led to above average gains in market share and incremental new product growth. Anderson has tremendous knowledge related to global financial services and retailing distribution trends, strategic approaches, product knowledge, customer trends, merchandising/way finding development, customer analytics and assessing market potential and growth. Anderson has additional work experience in Mexico, the United States, the Caribbean, and Britain. Professional Affiliations & Designations International Council of Shopping Centers (I.C.S.C.)
Posts by George Anderson
Retail Franchise Development
Jul 27th
Retail growth in the U.S. is largely focused on small- to mid-sized companies. Larger and more established retailers have made the jump into the international market place to supplement their expansion plans. However, the small and mid-sized retailers are an aggressively growing market niche that warrants real estate attention and solutions.
It is absolutely critical for small and mid -sized franchises to put together a strategic real estate plan. A real estate blueprint is a key ingredient to ensuring the retailer understands how many markets they can expand into, how many locations they can open and tying those market expectations into investment dollars. The retail broker provides the critical link between establishing a solid real estate blueprint and network expansion. More >
Pitch Pads
Jun 15th
Portability is the popular (current) trend in obtaining instant access to information. Many real estate professionals are taking geo-demographics and access to mapping solutions on the road. Being able to bring customized, accurate information to the “windshield” of a site visit is an extremely powerful way to “tell the story” about a particular location, whether it be a vacant free-standing pad, a brown field or a potential investment property. More >
Cornerstones to International Expansion
May 4th
With an every expanding global marketplace, retailers are faced with the daunting task of embarking on network expansion beyond the U.S. borders. Whether it is into Canada, Mexico or China, there are five key cornerstones retailers need to understand in order to meet with a successful international presence. Each cornerstone is linked with the next, yet each possesses its own challenges. More >
For Retail Property Developers, Finding the Right Tenant Means More than Just Filling Space
Mar 23rd
Historically, developers (landlords) would react to vacancy in their shopping centers by leasing space without understanding how the surrounding market area may have changed, and which retailers to properly target for the development. Developers who are responsible for managing properties should be more proactive with their developments in order to assess how the market area has changed over time. Lifecycle of markets don’t change overnight but do change over time as the residential base grows older, More >
From Greenfields to Brownfields
Dec 2nd
Analytics are strategically important when framing market expectations. The key is to develop a story about the market (greenfield or brownfield) that is based on facts not fiction and speaks to the lifecycle of the market today but more importantly how it will transform in the coming years. In short, analytics are being used more and more from the outset of any new development (greenfield) to properly measure market potential and to determine the highest and best use of the property. Market analytics can evaluate a greenfield property to determine the types of residential to build, together with any mixed-use component, office and retail. More >
A Market Segmentation is Essential to the Success of a Retailer!
Oct 27th
An accurate understanding of the market area where a new retail location will be based is key to the success of the venture. Traditionally retailers would collect a core set of demographic variables as criteria for understanding a particular market or site. The key variables are: income, age, population, traffic counts and depending on the market area ethnicity. Retailers set minimum thresholds for each variable in order to filter through potential opportunities. In fact, a number of retailers and developers still use this approach today to validate markets. More >
Don’t Just Describe the Market Area; Analyze the Market Area!
Oct 6th
As you know the key step in the site selection process is to identify the perfect location. To identify ideal or optimal sites, retailers invest significant amount of time, resources and money to research market areas. Retailers see the value in demographics and mapping technologies; however, it is what you do with the data that is important. Many retailers today pay close attention to understanding who their clients are, where they live, shop and work; however, far too many retailers simply use the data the wrong way. Data is a commodity and needs to be manipulated to tell a story. More >
Is There a Right Way to Expand?
Sep 15th
The key first step for any retailer to make prior to embarking on a network expansion plan is to know your customer. Market understanding is vital to knowing who your customer is, how many customers exist and where to find them. It is critical to understand your market today but more importantly what that market is going to look like in five years. Retailers need to go beyond the basics of describing their market areas and start to analyze their markets. It is not the number of people that matter in a market but the types of people in a market. Understanding market capacity will impact store capacity – how many stores can I (the retailer) open in a given market? More >
